Job Discussion Forums

[hdeth]

[Angel.Ro]

Are you guys finding that there is a trend towards universities requiring more than just a BA and TEFL for their teaching positions? At least in the major cities?

[CNexpatesl]

Pretty much every single trainer center's schedule I've come across was like this:

Wed - Fri -- 1pm - 8pm
Saturday and Sunday -- 9am - 5pm

Mondays and Tuesdays off only.

If you're planning to work at one, I really don't recommend it unless you're making over 15k rmb/month. They're godawful.

[Laurence]

My first full-time work in China was in language schools.

What others say here is somewhat true:

- long hours
- short holidays
- low pay (although this certainly is not the case in Disney and Wall St.)

However I'd like to balance out these comments with some counter arguments in favour of language school work:

Working at language schools is often a highly social endeavor. You forge connections with people that you might not usually bother with, because there is lots of camaraderie in the staff rooms (especially during the weekend onslaughts). Staffroom bookshelves are often well-stocked and there are always other teachers milling around and willing to reflect on successful practice, answer questions and share ideas. This kind of thing is incredibly healthy for developing your teaching 'toolkit', and even your own teaching style and philosophy.

Rather than focusing on pedagogical strategies and collaborative success, university teachers seem to be more concerned with their own individual roles as gatekeepers of knowledge and expertise (which IMHO is a bit of a joke in this day and age).

I was in a bar on the weekend and there was a table of people from Web or somewhere, lots of solidarity and smiles and cheers all round. There were a couple of university teachers too and the difference was stark - huddled and muttering over their glasses, searching for purpose. To get a good work/life balance, you need to have a good social life. In my experience university teachers - despite their abundance of free time - generally have a harder time with this. Sorry if this seems like an attack on university teachers - it's not, just my anecdotal observations.

[Markness]

Training school I worked at: Wednesday/Thursday off. Friday was 1-830, Saturday was 10-5, and Sunday was 10-6. Monday/Tuesdays were like 4-830. If you add those hours up you get approximately 30. I worked on a "20 hour" contract. Pay was meh for how long I had to stay there. Loads of incompetence from the Chinese staff. Lots of last minute crap/trying to guilt you into doing things for free. If you say "no" then they get grumpy because I "make so much money and barely work", which was only a 10 hour difference from their contract and all they did was sit on their ass and watch Chinese dramas in the office/shop on taobao with their BF's money. Extremely annoying course consultants attempting to make me do demos for people even though my hours were full because I was the "good teacher". Things got even more retarded when we got a foreign teacher manager who wanted to move up the food-chain as quickly as possible. The way he thought he could do this quickest was by saving the company money and by enforcing the companies illegal practices, such as working longer than 8 hours a day, trying to make us come in on our days off, trying to make people get un-paid training, deducting people's pay if they missed doing an office hour (this could be something like, you had to do one of those impromptu classes because someone called-in sick last second, he felt that everyone HAD to do everything, or else he felt you had insulted him). He would constantly harass us about not making our hours even though the dim-wit knew that there were holidays that we would have that were unpaid and the students would always cancel on those days. We would have to come in on the holidays and do office hour crap to make our hours, even though the only reason we wouldn't make it was because the greedy school was open during EVERY holiday. We also had unpaid sick days which meant we would get docked a day of pay (this is illegal), and I brought it up to the head office and guess what.. white knight foreign teacher manager and the other Chinese managers tried to bully me after that. I threatened the company with a lawyer and they backed off. The Chinese are just so bad at business. "We have a hard time getting foreign teachers to come to our school, so let's try to bully them/screw them over so they keep leaving, and then we don't have any teachers!". This happened to the New Orientals in my city and will definitely happen at the training school I was working at. If you want the name of them then send me a PM. They're pretty much only in Chengdu.

This was just the nonsense you would have to deal WITHOUT even teaching. The students themselves were super-rich-spoiled-turds whom you'd want to strangle on a regular basis. I eventually had them under control, but, still their parents would insist on nonsense. I also was the teacher who did TOEFL and IELTs and had to literally get the students to fail because the parents did not feel what I was doing was the right way to teach them. I had the students doing practice tests/had a mock exam setting and their skills were improving. Parents apparently didn't think it was good enough and demanded the students listen to "American audio tapes". Of course the students went on to fail their exam and I now teach some of them at my high school I work at now.. haha...

Public schools: Primary is pretty easy going but the students are awful. No English/have been spoiled by their grandparents because their parents are never around. Middle school is a pretty good time as the students realize that if they don't smarten up that they'll end up janitors, and High school is hit-or-miss. If you do TOEFL/IELTs like me then they'll try. If you are just an oral English teacher then they will not give a rats arse (especially the male students, can't help it if the female ones do a good job because they don't want to end up having to get married to some ugly man who has money but serious problems otherwise). The reason for the high school students not giving a rats arse about your class is because they have the GaoKao. If you are okay with farting around for 40 minutes and collecting a paycheck then high school is the way to go.

Pay scales: In my city at least, the training schools range from 6000-15,000 a month. Hours are 20+ per week of teaching not including office hours which brings this down. The public schools pay range is about 8000-25,000 a month. I am in the upper-middle part of that pay scale and work only 15 hours a week. Add in that a 7-year old girl who follows me to wherever I move in the city for some tutoring and I slap on an extra 2500-3000 a month from her. Clearing about 19-20,000 a month and working only about 20 hours a week including the tutoring.

Moral of the story: Don't work at a training school unless you are completely new and need help with everything. They're OK for getting a year of experience under your belt/shopping around for better jobs, but otherwise, avoid them like the plague. Too much nonsense to deal with there.

[rogerwilco]

One of the problems with training centers is that your salary comes directly out of the owner's pocket.
So, many of the owners try to be "clever", and want to cheat you out of as much of your salary as possible.

That is why you hear about so much bullying and incompetence as is mentioned above. Many Chinese do not think about the future consequences of their actions, they only care about how much money they can put in their pocket today.

[hdeth]

[Markness]

[hdeth]

[Markness]

I would quote you hdeth but the quote will take up half of the screen! I am just teasing at the fact that people need anything higher than a BA. It helps, sure, but is not necessary. Masters and PHDs are not worth it if someone wants to just work in a university here, but what you listed would be worth it. The whoppin' 500 yuan per higher level of degree, will only take 30-40 years to get a return! There are also some fat cat bankers/engineers that make loads here, but they get massive relocation bonuses (which you mentioned). I am fairly certain that 99 percent of the expat population in China are regular joe ESL teachers though.

[buravirgil]

[Markness]

[hdeth]

I thought a lot of the overseas management positions and so on were young guys and gals looking for a career boost...

[buravirgil]

[Deats]

I have seen a few jobs at unis that require an MA and pay a lot more. A recent uni job in Xiamen required MA and paid 14,000 for 12 months.

Also, the uni where I will work pays 36,000 more for an MA per year and 60,000 more for a PHD.

That's not too shabby.